Distracted is definitely the word for the start to my New Year as one thing after another has pulled me away from writing. In a funny way though, I have kind of enjoyed the break, no matter how enforced it has been!

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I think it's the usual knock-on effect of post Christmas stress syndrome but my energy levels have fallen to zero. What little energy I have got seems to be quickly absorbed by the continuing (but no longer enthusiastic) exercise and diet regime. Still, I managed not to put anything on over Christmas and have now lost a total of three stone :-), though ideally I still have another stone and a half to go :-(.

The first thing to go wrong after Christmas was the exercise machine breaking, so burning off the calories now requires more time and effort. My plans to continue blogging regularly then crashed when our main computer decided to stop working - permanently. Though we have got an old laptop, it is much more hassle to get out and I can't do it when the kids are around because they're liable to break it!

Anyway, I was just getting back into the routine again (still minus a main computer) when my insulin pump broke. I've been diabetic for a long time, so this shouldn't have been a disaster. However, it broke on a Sunday, which I have since learnt is just not good news. (Note to self: next time make sure my pump breaks during normal office hours so that I don't inconvenience the manufacturers and doctors too much. Obviously, I planned it to cause maximum inconvenience to everyone else, as my pump breaking (on Sunday or any other day!) is in no way inconvenient to me!)

So what happened? Well, firstly, out of office hours in an emergency like this, one has to ring the manufacturers in the US, where I sat on a telephone loop for some time. Then I was told that they could have an emergency pump sent to me but they could only order it from the US so it would have to go through customs and take three or so days. Now, ordering one from the company's UK office it would be delivered within 24 hours probably but he couldn't put that order through for me!

In the meantime, I had to change back to an ordinary insulin and syringe regime. This is not an easy adjustment as the two systems work very differently, and it was not helped by the fact that I couldn't get to any of the dosage info stored on my broken pump. Now, when I go to the hospital, they take copious notes about my insulin dosages, so one would have thought that wasn't too big a problem. However, it requires the doctors be able to get hold of my notes, which apparently takes at least 48 hours, if one is lucky! Just as well I've been diabetic for such a long time then and have managed to muddle through largely on my own initiative and intuition.

Anyway, before all this happened I had various plans, including blogging about Catherine Smith's latest poetry collection Lip, which I greatly enjoyed. Now I will admit now that Catherine Smith is poetry editor at the new writer where I have had poems published in the past. But in case anyone thinks I'm being sycophantic, I'm not! I haven't submitted to the magazine for a while, and, to be blunt, if I hadn't enjoyed the collection, I simply wouldn't bother blogging about it at all.

Originally, I had planned to do a full review of the collection but unfortunately it's bnow some time since I read it and I can't remember all I wanted to say. The following, therefore, is just a general outline and far from a proper literary appreciation.

The collection includes some prize-winning poems and another thing I enjoyed about it is the variety of styles from eg the short padding/footstep pace of ,Ascension:

She doesn't register
the slap of the pavement

underfoot
then the grip...

to National Poetry Competition 2006 commended poem The Biting Point:

Thirty years dead and still curmudgeonly,
my grandfather is driving me through
the fog-numbed streets of Crystal Palace...

Reading the poems, a few themes stood out to me, particularly family and sex/love. These might sound rather mundane, or typical poetic themes that some, unfortunately, tend to label "women's themes". But these poems were some of my favourites. They not only struck chords with me but many also contain images I found beautifully striking. From the whole unusual eroticism in The Ewe to, for example, the "cloud albumen, sun yolk" of Blue Egg:

That first morning, he boils her
an egg the colour of a spring sky,
a baby boy's first room...

Or the mother-daughter poem, Bladderwrack:

I shape your hair from dried bladderwrack -
black, unruly, from my side of the family -

hair like squid-ink tagliatelle. I crown you
with a twist of bright green rope,

press in lobster-claw eyebrows,
barnacled eyes,...